The president “shall nominate.” Who better than one who's been elected twice?

A quick note: Prominent Republican Party representatives say that the Supreme Court vacancy created by Justice Scalia's death shouldn't be filled by someone nominated by the current president. The choice of the people, as represented by this fall's presidential election, should be honored, they say.

Actually, the current president, having been twice elected by a majority of the American people, better represents the people's choice than the untested, unproven person who will be elected in November. A reasonable argument can be made that the current presumptive Republican front runner, Donald Trump, may well not last out his first term, let alone win a second presidential election, should his wild rhetoric be matched by correspondingly tumultuous, egotistic, and reckless action.

Our next president-elect, whatever their party, will be a first-timer to that daunting position, with a great deal to learn, whose worthiness is still to be demonstrated.

Doesn’t it make sense, as Ruth Marcus wrote, that we “defer” to the votes Americans already cast? She added:

Listen to the Republicans, in the Senate or on the campaign trail, arguing for inaction. Their claims proceed from the position of raw power, not constitutional language.

As her Washington Post article "The GOP’s dangerously dogmatic Supreme Court obstructionism," argues:

It would be bad for the country ... Citizens deserve conclusive answers on issues important enough to reach the high court, and divisive enough to split the justices, whether that involves Obama’s executive actions on immigration, Texas’s restrictive abortion law or the role of public-sector unions. They also deserve a functioning political process. Refusing to go forward would serve to deepen and entrench the existing partisanship and ensuing gridlock.

Finally, a Senate work stoppage would, in fact, be bad for Republicans. In the nation’s capital these days, everything is political, every institution politicized. That may be inevitable and irreparable, yet tables here have a way of turning. One party’s obstructionism ends up hurting it down the road. ...

History offers no refuge for Republicans here. Grassley’s argument that it has been “standard practice” that nominees are not confirmed during an election year conveniently ignores the fact that such vacancies are thankfully rare. There is no standard practice. 

The presidential candidates have been even more strident. I’ll single out Ted Cruz, because he’s both a former Supreme Court clerk and a current member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

“We should not allow a lame-duck president to essentially capture the Supreme Court in the waning months of his presidency,” Cruz told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. 

Capture? Read the Constitution, senator. The president “shall nominate.” Not “shall” unless some unwritten nominate-by date has passed. So much for strict constructionism and conservatives who bleat about their fealty to the constitutional text. 

The Senate is authorized to advise and consent. It is not entitled to conduct a constitutional sit-down strike.

As Eric Stock wrote in ‘Bad politics’ to fight Obama on justice nomination:

Many prominent Republicans have called for President Barack Obama to hold off on nominating a new Supreme Court justice to replace the late Antonin Scalia, but a GOP consultant rejects that idea.
Former Illinois Republican Party chairman Pat Brady told WJBC’s Scott Laughlin the president can nominate whomever he wants, whenever he wants, but GOP senators who don’t like it can simply vote down the nominee.
“If you really want to kill a nomination, there are about a billion ways to do that,” Brady said. “To jump up and say we just aren’t going to listen to the president is bad politics.”
Several Republican presidential candidates have said the president is a lame duck and the issue should be left for the voters to decide.
“It’s bad for the image (Democrats) like to portray Republicans as obstructionists,” Brady said. “It just plays into that.”

This whole business reflects an underlying abuse of a central idea of the First World: impartial justice. Think about the word "impartial": It means non-partisan.